Friday Box Office Analysis
By Tim Briody
June 21, 2008
Get Smart
The Steve Carrell-led remake of the 1960s television show opened to a fairly decent $13.6 million on Friday. After that spring deluge of comedies, audiences in search of laughs really weren't given many options that didn't involve Adam Sandler until now. Add in the absolute perfect casting and likely a good deal of nostalgia and it's no surprise that this would end up a winner. With solid word-of-mouth as well, a very decent Saturday should be in the works, and I see Get Smart ending up with $40.8 million for the weekend.
The Love Guru
It's with a sigh of relief that I can report that The Love Guru only opened to $5.4 million Friday. BOP repeatedly drives home the point that there is no competition between opening film, but why anyone would pick seeing this over Get Smart, we'll never know. The Love Guru should come in with around $14.5 million for the weekend and then entering freefall from here.
Notable Holdovers
Um, yikes. Both of last weekend's new releases take extreme nosedives in weekend two. The Incredible Hulk plunges 69% from last Friday to $6.7 million, while The Happening takes a laughable 75% drop down to $3.2 million.
The Incredible Hulk's Friday to Friday drop is not as bad as 2003's Hulk, which was off 77% Friday and 69.6% for the weekend. The second attempt at making this franchise is already done. Give it $21.1 million for the weekend.
As far as M. Night Shyamalan's movie goes, this is an even bigger drop than Lady in the Water saw (but as a consolation, The Happening has already made more than that movie did), which was only off 66% from its first Friday, enroute to a 60.4% weekend decline. The Happening may fall just short of $10 million for the weekend.
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